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I am currently listening to Fire and Fury. It’s not too different from the NY Mag excerpt so far. The book is just more fleshed out. The editors at NY Mag did a great job of removing sentences while keeping impact and readability.

Even if this story is full of holes, it can’t ALL be full of shit. If it were, Bannon, Conway, Spicer, Sessions, Ivana, Jared, et al would all be publicly griping. Instead, there’s silence. They’re calling Wolff a liar but also claiming that Bannon is in violation of his NDA which is a confusing bit of logic even if you wanted to believe it. I feel like Wolff did a good job of explaining how he got his info and that some of the info might sound hinky because of the chaotic way that people provided quotes to him. When I first read the excerpt, I felt like certain parts seemed like fanfiction but that it was interesting nonetheless.

I wish Charles were here to laugh at this with us haha. He’d be gasping over this like we are. I posted this picture of Bea Arthur on Charles’ Facebook page before:

I don’t know where this image came from but I love it.

He loved the Golden Girls and (of course) so do I. I was telling someone that yesterday and it made me think of him. These are weird goddamn times we’re living through. How can Charles be gone and Donald Trump be President of the United States of America?!

Today was La Befana and we intended to celebrate it somehow but Kristyn had to finish a paper so we forgot. We love witches and Kristyn is half Sicilian so we were excited to learn about this tradition. Maybe we’ll do something witchy tomorrow to celebrate.

Tomorrow, I learned, is Little Christmas or Women’s Christmas (aka the Epiphany). We were both raised Catholic but are no longer practicing or consider ourselves to be. However, we are “culturally Catholic” and I never gave much thought as to why I keep the tree up for a week or two after the New Year. My Mom happened to mention the other day that she keeps it up for Little Christmas for luck. It turns out that I’ve been celebrating Little Christmas out of a familial Catholic habit. Life is weird. Anyway, I thought it was interesting because Women’s Christmas is celebrated in Ireland and Scotland and on that day, women go out and party while men take care of the house. I’m INTO this. Too bad there are no men here to exploit. Maybe I’ll make Giles and Monster (our cats) clean up their own litter boxes tomorrow. Here’s Giles looking pretty earlier tonight:

G.

I’m writing this to wait out Kristyn until she’s done with her paper. It was due 8 minutes ago but if I know her, she’s still toodling. I think I need to go pry her fingers off the keyboard. It’s not that we have anything to do but I know that if I leave her to her own devices, she’ll futz with this paper until she passes out typing. I am going to go shout “SUBMIT IT!” at her. Goodnight!

We lost Charles on Monday, November 27, 2017. I don’t want to write too much about it because I don’t want to get myself upset. His passed away suddenly but naturally without fear or pain. We have all gotten signs from him that he’s okay where he is and I genuinely believe that to be true. It’s hard to believe it but it’s true. I can’t talk about it now. I keep starting and stopping from saying things because it hurts my chest to think about. I am thinking about him all the time and everything is reminding me of him. Mostly, that’s been good but sometimes I get the wind knocked out of me by a simple thought and start crying. I’ve been letting myself lean into however I’m feeling about it. This being the holiday season, there are a lot of feelings and distractions and fun things. We went to a medium the week after his services who said that Charles was fine, didn’t want us to be upset, and that if we knew where he was, we wouldn’t feel sad; we’d be jealous. That thought comforts me. I have to stop writing about this now. I just wanted to write something small about it to mark it on this blog because this blog has served as a sort of public diary for almost ten years. I always intend to write more on here and hope to going forward but I definitely couldn’t do it without mentioning my brother, Charles. I love him and miss him very much. My life was better for having him here and I hate that this is all the time we had. I’m crying now and my chest hurts so I’m going to stop.

I need to take a page out of Jen Kirkman’s book and “Just Keep Livin”. I’ve been watching her Instagram stories lately which are road diaries because she’s on tour. Largely, it’s complaining about how not enough people are paying attention to her newsletter but it makes me laugh. She’s forthright, cranky, knows herself, and has great confidence. Mostly, I love how self-possessed and direct she is. I’m going to make her my patron saint for now.

I haven’t written here for a while because I have been hedging as to whether or not I want to keep this blog going or start a new one. I think I’m going to keep this one going. It’s been going since 2007, why stop now?

I’m not feeling well today so I’m home sick but I did have a great weekend that I want to share anyway. I haven’t blogged in a while and since this weekend was a humdinger, I figured that posting my pictures her might be fun.

We went to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Joe Walsh at the Prudential Center in Newark courtesy of my company.

We went to see Tim Stewart-Winter perform in the NYC Gay Men’s Chorus and it was a gahdamn delight!

I haven’t felt like blogging lately because I don’t just want to blog about my day to day life. I don’t want to just sit down and blurt out everything that’s happened to me over the past whatever amount of time it’s been since the last time I wrote.

I need to come up with a plan that’s as fun to write as it might be for anyone else to read. Coming soon to a blog near you. See ya in two years!

P.S. I called this post “Lucy and Ethel” because I just binge-watched every episode of I Love Lucy that was in Hulu. They don’t have every episode so I’m going to start over with the DVD collection and fill in the gaps.

Pals, I’m feeling a bit better. I had a decent week. I think I’m through brooding (for now). The weather is lightening up too. It’s been springlike the last few days and that always makes me feel better. Maybe I have Seasonal Affective Disorder; who knows.

On Saturday, we lazed about all day and then took Shirley to the dog park in Lyndhurst. It was heaven to watch her run around with all the other doggies. It was so nice out too. When she started getting tired, we took her to the pet store to pick up some cat and dog food. We also bought her two Nylabones; one that is purple and shaped like an ice cream cone and the other one that looks like a pork chop. Then we went to the hardware store next door and bought a shovel and an overflow plate for the tub. Kristyn’s YouTubing her way to becoming a first rate plumber. THEN we did a weird thing. Because I wanted to stay out but in the car (because it was supposed to rain), I suggested that we go through the Burger King drive-thru so we could eat fries and feed the birdies that hang there. It started to pour while we were sitting there and it was so nice in the car that we laid back and took a nap. Did I mention that we were just around the corner from our own house? Haha. It was fun. When we got home, we drank blush champagne and watched a documentary about the Loving family. Then we started watching 4 Little Girls and I fell asleep against my own will.

Today, I was supposed to go to an open house for an MA program I’m interested in but I got the times mixed up and ended up staying home. It’s nice though because Kristyn’s parents stopped over and brought us rolls from Brother’s. I’ve been watching I Love Lucy all day which is fun. I think I’m going to draw or sew today and then watch the Oscars tonight.

Pals. I feel stuck. Impotent. Frustrated. Let down. Deflated. Uninspired. Without a goal. I’ve had a setback and I honestly 100% do not know what to do. I am always looking at the future and trying to think of where I want to go but right now it’s in overdrive. Ugh, I’m so impotent right now that I don’t even know what I want to say about this. I’m writing this as catharsis and I feel like I can’t spit out what I want to say.

I have a sticker that says “Be the Leslie Knope of Whatever You Do” on my laptop. It’s a daily reminder to me to care, to do, to perfect, to systematize, to be a force of good. I’ve recently been re-watching Parks and Rec and have been really inspired by Leslie. That inspiration has been completely deflated and I don’t know what to do.

That Man fired US Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates today because she made a public statement about the “travel ban” aka Muslim ban:

“At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful,” Yates wrote. She wrote that “for as long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.”

For posterity (because I know I’ll forget), this past Friday, he wrote an executive order banning people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the country (even if they have green cards or are dual citizens). The Acting Attorney General wrote the above statement to the Justice Department in order to tell them that they didn’t have to defend the order.

“I’m terrific at estimating crowd size. It looks like a dozen, maybe two dozen women at most.” By Tom Toro in the New Yorker

Pals, I feel very frustrated. I think a lot of people do. Too many things are happening way too fast for anyone to keep track of. I have been thinking that I am going to start keeping track of what’s going on in the world. I’m going to start keeping track of what I’m doing to combat it and what I’m NOT doing. I’m going to start keeping track of ways that other people can help the world. I am learning that I am a visual thinker and in order for me to keep track of things, I need to be able to see them. Although this has always been a personal blog, and will remain one, I think that doing this will make me feel a lot better. I always feel better with a plan; even if I stray from the plan.

Also, here are some pictures of us at the Women’s March in DC last weekend:

We’ve been having a few good/weird weeks. The above picture is us on Thanksgiving before we were going to go home. On that particular day, someone in my town created a petition to change our town’s holiday tree lighting to the “Christmas Tree Lighting”. It was some petty “War on Christmas” crap and it irked me so I created a counter-petition using their exact words. Holy crap that started a town wide FB fight that lasted two full weeks but a few good things came out of it:

1) We attended the tree lighting and it was beautiful! I’m so glad we went. They had kids from the schools singing, dancers, a talent contest, and then a little street fair. I’m going to go every year from now on! Meanwhile, the original petitioner or her cronies didn’t even go.

2) We ended up going to the Town Hall Meeting after the event and addressing the Mayor and Town Council to ask whether or not a petition could change the tree lighting even to favor one religion over another. The answer is no. The reason it’s called a “Holiday Tree Lighting” or “Town Tree Lighting” is because the tree is considered a secular symbol, then there’s a manger, and a menorah. We’d been meaning to start attending Town Hall Meetings anyway so this whole thing actually is making me a better citizen!

Also, we went to go see White Christmas in Montclair last weekend on the big screen. It was gorgeous. God, I love that movie. I think I might love Holiday Inn better (except that scene, you know which one).

This weekend we kept a pretty low profile. We ran some errands and today Kristyn went over her brother’s house. I’m doing things around the house this weekend. I’m decorating, cleaning, and cooking. It snowed for the first legit time today. I also made weird pumpkin, peanut butter, dark chocolate cookies. They’re good in a really weird way. I also finally did Curvy Yoga! It felt so good. I had better GTFO. There’s a lot to do before this day is out.

Also, I’m going to start updating more here. I have just been very very sidelined. As per usual, I’m giving myself too many projects. I wrote them all out and I’m flabbergasted with my own optimism.